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So I'll ask the same question that I've yet to receive a concrete response to: How long is long enough before you'll trust the vaccine? A solid number, in year

So I'll ask the same question that I've yet to receive a concrete response to: How long is long enough before you'll trust the vaccine? A solid number, in years please. Every anti-vaxxer I've asked that to has hand-waved the question away, because they know if they say something like "I need a minimum of 20 years before I'll trust a vaccine" they'll sound paranoid, which they are. Also their timespan is almost certainly long enough that any pandemic would be long over by the time they'd trust it, essentially precluding vaccines as tool during a pandemic if everyone were to adopt their perspective. By virtue of its distribution these vaccines have already been tested far more extensively than any other vaccine in history at the time of their release. If you don't trust this vaccine then you should never trust any future vaccine. All your "what if"s remind me of the "what if it causes fertility issues?" that swept the internet last year despite zero valid supporting data. Well my wife and I trusted the actual data instead of internet speculation, as well as the data showing what COVID can potentially do to fetuses, and we got pregnant well after both being fully vaccinated. Thus far the baby appears healthy (genetic testing clean, strong heart beat, correct size). So it turns out the experts were right on that one, and it's more directly relevant than your Vioxx example.

swader999 5y ago
I've seen enough already to know the risk reward isn't worth it for myself or my children. Myself and my immediate relatives suffered too many negative side effects. FIL still in ICU for stroke two weeks after vax, wife severe migraine for ninety days and me with blood clots.
- scottLobster 5y ago
  Well maybe you guys are one of the rare sufferers of actual side effects/allergies and shouldn't get the vaccine, assuming any of the above is related to the vaccine and there weren't other medical issues going on. Or if there were maybe said medical issues interact negatively with the vaccine and should be accounted for. That said all vaccines have side effects for some populations. There a reason why when you get your flu shot they ask you if you've had any previous bad reactions to flu shots. That doesn't make the flu shot or any vaccine a bad bet, sometimes you bet with 99% odds and end up the 1%.
- hooande 5y ago
  hundreds of millions of people were vaccinated. shouldn't the hospitals be full of stroke victims if those two things are related? if you don't want to get vaccinated, don't. no need for poorly reasoned rationalizations
  - swader999 5y ago
    I probably didn't give enough detail but it's very clear to myself these issues were vax related.
    - hooande 5y ago
      how? think about how many people have been vaccinated. if it caused strokes or severe respiratory illness there would be ample evidence of that by now. it wouldn't just be this or that relative. think about even 1/10th of 1% of 200 million people having a stroke within the same time period. you think nobody would notice that?
      - defaultprimate 5y ago
        Heart attack, stroke, and blood clots were massively up among all ages in 2021, even compared to 2020
    - creato 5y ago
      Lots of parents said the same thing about MMR vaccines causing autism in their kids. But we know after decades of massive studies that it wasn't true.
throw10920 5y ago
> if they say something like "I need a minimum of 20 years before I'll trust a vaccine" they'll sound paranoid, which they are Chronic lead poisoning, mesothelioma (cancer usually caused by abestos), lung cancer (cigarettes), various types of cancer caused by Agent Orange, and cancers caused by DDT take years-to-decades to manifest. Asking for 20 years is completely reasonable and supported by a dozen other substances that do have long-term side effects on that timescale. > Also their timespan is almost certainly long enough that any pandemic would be long over by the time they'd trust it, essentially precluding vaccines as tool during a pandemic if everyone were to adopt their perspective. Almost everyone that I've heard (except for a lone hardcore anti-vaxxer) who has expressed unease at the safety of the mRNA technology in general, not the specific application of it to SARS-CoV-2 - which is understandable, as there's no long-term trial data available about it. Several said that they were waiting to take the Novavax vaccine, which uses an older technology (subunit) that has been in use for decades. So, assuming that the majority of people uneasy about taking the vaccine adopt that stance above, then no, there's no "precluding vaccines as tool during a pandemic" because the criteria is whether a particular vaccine technology has been tested for decades or not, not the particular payload. > By virtue of its distribution these vaccines have already been tested far more extensively than any other vaccine in history at the time of their release. If you don't trust this vaccine then you should never trust any future vaccine. Testing a vaccine with one million people for one year does not translate into ten years of study for one hundred thousand people. You cannot predict long-term effects with short-term data, and long-term effects are what these people are worried about. Nobody except hardline anti-vaxxers (who make up a tiny tiny minority of the population that I'm not discussing here) wants every single payload+technology combination to be tested for decades before use. > Well my wife and I trusted the actual data instead of internet speculation, as well as the data showing what COVID can potentially do to fetuses, and we got pregnant well after both being fully vaccinated. I'm reminded of a line from a sibling comment: "you get 0 applause from me if you randomly guess a “what if” correctly" - and without actual data as to whether mRNA vaccines have any long-term side effects (which is the issue under discussion), you're just guessing. Finally, I'll preempt one of your talking points "We don't know what the long-term side effects of covid are either, yet, so why not pick the less risky of the two?" Because that is a personal choice - so it's up to the individual, not the government to impose. It's generally a good strategy that, given ambiguous information, you still make the best use of what you have and pick the least risky option (i.e. vaccines) - however, in the specific case of vaccines in the US, the fact that the US government has shielded vaccine manufactures from legal liability means that there's significant downside in case there are long-term side effects. If you want more people to take the vaccine, you should be campaigning hard to get that law repealed. I don't see anyone railing against anti-vaxxers doing that, so the more likely explanation is that these people are merely using the vaccine as an attempt to increase government control.
s1artibartfast 5y ago
I'm vaccinated, but I would go with some thing along the lines of 10-20 years. That is when we will actually have long term data. Until then, it is all predictions and assumptions, however well informed. I work in medical R&D and there is a long history of drugs and products with delayed failure and unintended consequences. I think the chances are low, but anyone who claims they are zero is lying.
hammock 5y ago
>So I'll ask the same question that I've yet to receive a concrete response to: How long is long enough before you'll trust the vaccine? At this point it's not a matter of time in many cases, because it's already been shown in the data for certain demographics that the personal risk is not worth the personal benefit.
defaultprimate 5y ago
Long enough for there to be a sufficient amount of statistically significant data that demonstrably proves that mRNA techniques are safe with no deleterious long term side effects especially compared to the afflictions they are supposed to mitigate, and in spite of their disastrous results in animal trials over the past few decades. You don't need a specific time because we have specific ways of determining statistically significant effects over time and populations. The amount of data that currently exists is 0. Non eradicating vaccines during a pandemic of disease with transmissibility as high as COVID are actually a terrible idea for the same reason not finishing your antibiotics is: It applies selective pressure that promotes immune escape and treatment resistance. >By virtue of its distribution these vaccines have already been tested far more extensively than any other vaccine in history at the time of their release. If you don't trust this vaccine then you should never trust any future vaccine. This is a new level of newspeak. Releasing without testing is testing. Slavery is freedom. War is peace.
- arrrg 5y ago
  It’s completely normal for all medications and especially vaccines to be monitored very closely after they are first approved (also called "phase 4"). This is a completely normal part of the approval process, simply because (phase 3) studies with a couple thousand participants will miss very rare side effects (if they exist) because, you know, statistics. Of course you can trust a vaccine much, much, much more if it has been administered to a couple billion people as opposed to a couple thousand people, with no serious side effects being observed (or the side effects that are observed accounted for and reacted to). You implication that this is somehow newspeak is deeply weird and irrational.
  - defaultprimate 5y ago
    Long term data doesn't exist, period. Newspeak isn't newspeak. Got it.
    - arrrg 5y ago
      Cloud you please explain your point more clearly and actually respond to what I have written?

swader999 5y ago

I've seen enough already to know the risk reward isn't worth it for myself or my children. Myself and my immediate relatives suffered too many negative side effects. FIL still in ICU for stroke two weeks after vax, wife severe migraine for ninety days and me with blood clots.

scottLobster 5y ago
Well maybe you guys are one of the rare sufferers of actual side effects/allergies and shouldn't get the vaccine, assuming any of the above is related to the vaccine and there weren't other medical issues going on. Or if there were maybe said medical issues interact negatively with the vaccine and should be accounted for. That said all vaccines have side effects for some populations. There a reason why when you get your flu shot they ask you if you've had any previous bad reactions to flu shots. That doesn't make the flu shot or any vaccine a bad bet, sometimes you bet with 99% odds and end up the 1%.
hooande 5y ago
hundreds of millions of people were vaccinated. shouldn't the hospitals be full of stroke victims if those two things are related? if you don't want to get vaccinated, don't. no need for poorly reasoned rationalizations
- swader999 5y ago
  I probably didn't give enough detail but it's very clear to myself these issues were vax related.
  - hooande 5y ago
    how? think about how many people have been vaccinated. if it caused strokes or severe respiratory illness there would be ample evidence of that by now. it wouldn't just be this or that relative. think about even 1/10th of 1% of 200 million people having a stroke within the same time period. you think nobody would notice that?
    - defaultprimate 5y ago
      Heart attack, stroke, and blood clots were massively up among all ages in 2021, even compared to 2020
  - creato 5y ago
    Lots of parents said the same thing about MMR vaccines causing autism in their kids. But we know after decades of massive studies that it wasn't true.

throw10920 5y ago

> if they say something like "I need a minimum of 20 years before I'll trust a vaccine" they'll sound paranoid, which they are Chronic lead poisoning, mesothelioma (cancer usually caused by abestos), lung cancer (cigarettes), various types of cancer caused by Agent Orange, and cancers caused by DDT take years-to-decades to manifest. Asking for 20 years is completely reasonable and supported by a dozen other substances that do have long-term side effects on that timescale. > Also their timespan is almost certainly long enough that any pandemic would be long over by the time they'd trust it, essentially precluding vaccines as tool during a pandemic if everyone were to adopt their perspective. Almost everyone that I've heard (except for a lone hardcore anti-vaxxer) who has expressed unease at the safety of the mRNA technology in general, not the specific application of it to SARS-CoV-2 - which is understandable, as there's no long-term trial data available about it. Several said that they were waiting to take the Novavax vaccine, which uses an older technology (subunit) that has been in use for decades. So, assuming that the majority of people uneasy about taking the vaccine adopt that stance above, then no, there's no "precluding vaccines as tool during a pandemic" because the criteria is whether a particular vaccine technology has been tested for decades or not, not the particular payload. > By virtue of its distribution these vaccines have already been tested far more extensively than any other vaccine in history at the time of their release. If you don't trust this vaccine then you should never trust any future vaccine. Testing a vaccine with one million people for one year does not translate into ten years of study for one hundred thousand people. You cannot predict long-term effects with short-term data, and long-term effects are what these people are worried about. Nobody except hardline anti-vaxxers (who make up a tiny tiny minority of the population that I'm not discussing here) wants every single payload+technology combination to be tested for decades before use. > Well my wife and I trusted the actual data instead of internet speculation, as well as the data showing what COVID can potentially do to fetuses, and we got pregnant well after both being fully vaccinated. I'm reminded of a line from a sibling comment: "you get 0 applause from me if you randomly guess a “what if” correctly" - and without actual data as to whether mRNA vaccines have any long-term side effects (which is the issue under discussion), you're just guessing. Finally, I'll preempt one of your talking points "We don't know what the long-term side effects of covid are either, yet, so why not pick the less risky of the two?" Because that is a personal choice - so it's up to the individual, not the government to impose. It's generally a good strategy that, given ambiguous information, you still make the best use of what you have and pick the least risky option (i.e. vaccines) - however, in the specific case of vaccines in the US, the fact that the US government has shielded vaccine manufactures from legal liability means that there's significant downside in case there are long-term side effects. If you want more people to take the vaccine, you should be campaigning hard to get that law repealed. I don't see anyone railing against anti-vaxxers doing that, so the more likely explanation is that these people are merely using the vaccine as an attempt to increase government control.

s1artibartfast 5y ago

I'm vaccinated, but I would go with some thing along the lines of 10-20 years. That is when we will actually have long term data. Until then, it is all predictions and assumptions, however well informed. I work in medical R&D and there is a long history of drugs and products with delayed failure and unintended consequences. I think the chances are low, but anyone who claims they are zero is lying.

hammock 5y ago

>So I'll ask the same question that I've yet to receive a concrete response to: How long is long enough before you'll trust the vaccine? At this point it's not a matter of time in many cases, because it's already been shown in the data for certain demographics that the personal risk is not worth the personal benefit.

defaultprimate 5y ago

Long enough for there to be a sufficient amount of statistically significant data that demonstrably proves that mRNA techniques are safe with no deleterious long term side effects especially compared to the afflictions they are supposed to mitigate, and in spite of their disastrous results in animal trials over the past few decades. You don't need a specific time because we have specific ways of determining statistically significant effects over time and populations. The amount of data that currently exists is 0. Non eradicating vaccines during a pandemic of disease with transmissibility as high as COVID are actually a terrible idea for the same reason not finishing your antibiotics is: It applies selective pressure that promotes immune escape and treatment resistance. >By virtue of its distribution these vaccines have already been tested far more extensively than any other vaccine in history at the time of their release. If you don't trust this vaccine then you should never trust any future vaccine. This is a new level of newspeak. Releasing without testing is testing. Slavery is freedom. War is peace.

arrrg 5y ago
It’s completely normal for all medications and especially vaccines to be monitored very closely after they are first approved (also called "phase 4"). This is a completely normal part of the approval process, simply because (phase 3) studies with a couple thousand participants will miss very rare side effects (if they exist) because, you know, statistics. Of course you can trust a vaccine much, much, much more if it has been administered to a couple billion people as opposed to a couple thousand people, with no serious side effects being observed (or the side effects that are observed accounted for and reacted to). You implication that this is somehow newspeak is deeply weird and irrational.
- defaultprimate 5y ago
  Long term data doesn't exist, period. Newspeak isn't newspeak. Got it.
  - arrrg 5y ago
    Cloud you please explain your point more clearly and actually respond to what I have written?